Romance

Is it me? Or is it Rose? (It’s me.) Groom cropped out to protect the innocent.

The Engagement Game, book 3 in my 49th Floor Series, is out today! Yay! I love this book so hard! It’s definitely my favourite of the trilogy, but, oddly, it was the hardest to write. Took me the longest, needed the most intensive editing, and generally drove me the bat-shittiest! I sometimes wonder if that’s why I love it more, but I honestly don’t think so. I just think it’s the best book of the three. Why? Heck if I know. (I would make a bad critic: I’m not very good at talking about books, other than to note the way they make me feel.)

The book I hated and then loved.

It’s been a big week because in addition to having a book out, I also:

1. Went to see Taylor Swift in concert.

2. Eloped! Aka, had a super secret surprise wedding that no one knew about!

Ha! And I did both of those things in the same afternoon, practically back-to-back, with a quick stop for dinner and a change of clothes in between.

In other words, it was perfect.

But something funny occurred to me on the train ride home: the outfit I wore to my wedding was exactly the same as one worn by Rose Verma, the heroine of The Engagement Game. And this was NOT on purpose—at least not consciously-on-purpose.

In the book, Rose is on a mission to find a boyfriend—she has a deadline of sorts—so she’s internet dating with a vengeance. Between her serial dates and attending lots of high society events with the book’s hero, with whom she’s entered into a bit of an unholy alliance, she’s often dressed to the nines. Unlike me, Rose is quite a fashionista. I, when I’m not taking part in secret wedding ceremonies, am usually wearing leggings and sweatshirts.

But we do have one thing in common, which is that we like bright colours. Rose, because she has so many events and dates to attend, goes through many consume changes: emerald green dresses, blue-and-silver ballgowns—you name it. One of her outfits—one the hero takes special note of as she heads out on her date, is an electric blue dress with red heels. Now, I don’t wear heels as a matter of principle, the principle being that I enjoy not suffering. But other than that, check me out! I’m wearing Rose’s outfit!

Yep, I am wearing the same outfit as the heroine of my romance novel. It was an accident!

I think? Probably this is the part where we should call in the psychologists, but I’m going to stick with “accident.”

Well, here’s some news: I just signed a deal to add a fourth book to my 49th Floor series published by Entangled’s Indulgence imprint. You know the one with the wounded, cranky, rich CEO dudes who think they aren’t interested in relationships?

And guess what? Book 4, called His Heart’s Revenge, is going to feature not one, but TWO wounded, cranky, rich CEO dudes who think they aren’t interested in relationships. Yep, I’m crashing the m/m romance novel party!

I’m super excited about this for a bunch of reasons.

1. I love reading series where the sexual orientation of the characters varies. You know, JUST LIKE REAL LIFE. Throw a bunch of wounded, cranky, rich CEO dudes into a room and one or two of them is bound to be gay, no?

2. The 49th Floor series is set in my beloved Toronto. The UN calls Toronto the most diverse city in the world. That’s why not everyone in the series is white. You know, JUST LIKE REAL LIFE. Now, not everyone in the series is straight, either.

3. I love that an established category romance imprint is publishing this book. When you write category romances, you’re generally more limited in what you can do—you’ve signed on to write a book that comes with a pre-existing brand. There are rules of the universe, so to speak (which is part of why I love category romance as a reader and as a writer, but that’s another post). I wonder if part of the reason you don’t see a lot of queer category romance is because in addition to imprint-specific rules, we generally take for granted, in established mainstream imprints, that we’re getting a man and a woman. I have to give a big shout out to Entangled here. (Did you know they accept m/m and f/f submissions in all their imprints?) I was also quite delighted, when I was going back and forth with the proposal for this book, that I got some (minor) pushback on a few issues. For example, one plot point required one of the characters to do something that was deemed not in keeping with an Indulgence hero. I love that. (I’m weird that way in general—I love being edited. But I also super-loved that in this case, category tropes were being scrupulously applied, regardless of sexual orientation.)

So, are you ready for TWO Indulgence heroes? His Heart’s Revenge isn’t done yet, but I can tell you that our heroes both work in the financial sector. One is an established bank CEO, and the other is an upstart launching his own private wealth management firm. (If you read my forthcoming book 3 in the 49th Floor Series, The Engagement Game, you’ll recognize our upstart hero as Marcus’s cousin Cary.) They’re in competition for a huge client, and our established CEO is Not. Losing. To. That. Punk. Partly as a matter of pride (he’s an Indulgence hero, after all), but partly because it’s personal. Yes, they have history. Which means some revenge is gonna rear its ugly head. And also: they are forced to go camping together. (Don’t you hate it when that happens?)

Big thanks and high fives to editors extraordinaire at Entangled, Tracy Montoya and Heather Howland, to my friend and former editor Gwen Hayes for match-making me with this project, and of course to my agent and friend and tireless advocate, Courtney Miller-Callihan.

I almost didn’t write this post. Then I almost didn’t post this post. I’m a newbie. I just published my first book a couple months ago. What the hell do I know? Mostly when the twitterverse explodes with some publishing controversy or other, I keep my mouth shut. But dang. I couldn’t help it.

1. I read all my reviews.
Yup. All of them. I admire authors who don’t read reviews. I want to be them when I grow up. I have a bunch more books coming out this year, and I hope that I won’t always be like this, that I’ll become uber busy and, I dunno, SUCCESSFUL, and I won’t care anymore. But I doubt it. I think it’s just the way I’m wired. I care what you think of me.

2. Sometimes, I read a review and I think, “Was this person on crack when she read my book?”
Did she even read my book? If she read a book, was it perhaps someone else’s and not mine?

3. When this happens, this is what I do.
I send the review to my writing friends and I say, what the everloving hell? And they say, what the everloving hell? And then I get over it. Because I have other shit to do.

4. When this happens, this is what I don’t do.

a) Contact the reviewer in any form up to and including stalking.
b) Write a blog post about it.
c) Respond in any way other than to send it to my friends and say what the everloving hell?

5. In fact, I don’t respond to reviews at all.
Sometimes, when I read a good review on a blog and there are some comments, I want to jump in to answer a question or something, but I DON’T DO IT. The only fashion in which I “respond” to reviews at all is when someone tweets at me that they reviewed my book. I usually say, “Thanks for reviewing!” or, if they liked it, “I’m glad you enjoyed!” I stress out about even this. But it seems rude to ignore someone tweeting at you when they took the time to review your book. So I err on the side of vague gratitude (which is underlain by real gratitude). Sarah Wendell gives a great conference session on this topic, and she’s funnier and more articulate than I am on this topic, so I encourage you to check her out if you ever have the chance.

6. I have become friends/friendly with some reviewers. Sometimes I worry about this.
But I think it’s inevitable. We like the same kinds of books: I write them, and they read them and review them. It’s a kind of self-selection: it’s bound to happen. I also think that if you’re worried about turning into Kathleen Hale, you’re probably not going to turn into Kathleen Hale. You might make some mistakes, but they’re gonna be smaller than hers.

7. I don’t think this means they owe me reviews on any subsequent books.

8. I don’t think this means they owe me positive reviews on any subsequent books.

9. I’m not going to say anything one way or the other if they do or do not review or do or do not like my subsequent books.

10. Because basically, I hang on to two first principles.

a) I wrote a book, but then I put it out into the world. I cannot control the world. (If I could control the world, I would not be writing books. Okay, yes I would.) The world is full of people who will not like my book. I cannot make them like my book. All I can do is send their reviews to my friends and say what the everloving hell? Sometimes this is hard, but you know what? So is being a grown up, yet I manage to do that every day—mostly.

b) I am so crazy-lucky that people are reading and reviewing my books.

This is not rocket science, people.

End rant.

Now because that was so heavy, here’s a picture of my boyfriend.

My boyfriend has not reviewed my books. But if he did, I would not respond. I would die, but I would not respond. I would die, but I would not respond. Photo by Ewen Roberts via Flickr Creative Commons.

Sandy’s shy. (Really. I know it’s hard to believe, but you try taking a picture of her.)

Once upon a time there was a girl named Jenny who liked to read romance novels. One day she thought, hey, maybe I should write a romance novel. How hard can it be, really?

Well, the gods heard that one, and after they finished laughing and doing some minor smiting of the prideful, they sent her a critique partner named Sandy.

Sandra Owens and I met in an online chapter of Romance Writers of America. We were both writing Regencies at the time—or trying to. We shared some opinions in common about that experience but I can’t tell you what they are OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE TO KILL YOU. And I like to leave the suspense-writing to Sandy.

I’ve written before about the weird and awesome relationship that you develop with critique partners, about how you skip all the “real life” getting-to-know-you stuff and get right to the guts of things: you want to be a writer. Hi, you say, here’s this thing I wrote, tell me what’s wrong with it, and also, should I get a blog tour company for this next release or is that just a waste of money?

Sandy was the first person I practiced being a writer with, both technically, in terms of honing my craft, but also emotionally, in terms of ADMITTING I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING I MIGHT FAIL AT. I’ve said before, and I don’t think Sandy would disagree with me, that on paper, we don’t have that much in common. Our books are different, we live in different countries, we’re in different stages of life.

But it never mattered. (I guess it could have. We’ve both talked about what a relief it was to meet for the first time in person and actually, you know, LIKE each other. But I think we were always destined to end up with our feet propped up, drinking wine and talking about the fake worlds inside our heads.)

Sandy and I read each other’s “bad” books. (Hers is getting overhauled; mine will never see the light of day.) When we met each other, neither of us had any pubishing credentials and neither of us had an agent. One of us (not Sandy) might have been a little shaky on the concept of point of view.

Fast-forward a few years. Today, a funny thing happened.

It’s like we’re at the Olympics and we’re on the podium and there’s an American flag and a Canadian flag. I didn’t check who was #2. Probably the Ukrainians.

Yes, there we are, #1 and #3 in the Amazon romance series store. Dang. I rewrote this a thousand times because like most women, I’m socialized to be uncomfortable with self-praise, but I’m just going to say it. There was a lot of luck in there, for sure, and a kick-ass literary agent. But there was also a crapload of hard work.

This is the story of Danny, who is the best friend of Cassie, the heroine in my holiday novel Saving the CEO, which is book 1 in the 49th Floor series. You don’t need to have read Saving the CEO, though, to read this story—it works as a standalone.

In Saving the CEO, Danny spends a lot of time trying to convince Cassie to join him for Christmas at his mother’s hobby farm, where his hippie mom is undergoing a back-to-the-land-themed midlife crisis. Cassie, having visited with him the previous Christmas, decides she’s too fond of things like central heating and running water to accompany him. (And, of course, by the time Christmas rolls around, she’s too busy enjoying her happily-ever-after.) So Danny is on his own.

The Thaw
by Jenny Holiday

If Danny had known that his mother’s back-to-the-land kick had gotten so serious that she’d let the pipes freeze, he never would have agreed to come up to the farm for Christmas.

“Dammit!” he yelped as he tripped over something on his way to the outhouse. It was only nine o’clock, but on Christmas Eve in Cowbit, Ontario, it had already been dark for a good five hours. And since Mom had also decided that electricity was another bourgeois luxury she didn’t need, it was dark.

The flashlight on his iPhone barely punctured the unremitting black as he swung it around, trying to see what he’d tripped on. He stooped to pick up the large, oblong…butter churn? He wasn’t totally sure because even though Mom used the phrase “back to the land,” as if she were returning to some bucolic past, she had actually spent her whole life before moving to Cowbit in a succession of Toronto apartments. The only time Danny had seen a butter churn had been while watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie in one of those “shoeboxes in the sky,” as she now called them, so he wasn’t overly confident in his ability to ID one in the wild.

The thing about shoeboxes in the sky, though, is that they generally had heat, light, and running water. Not to mention TV, cell service, and nearby delis. In fact, he missed his own shoebox—his gorgeous, tricked out shoebox—something fierce right now.

Sighing, he aimed his phone in the general direction of the outhouse. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

“And happy fucking New Year.”

“Jesus Christ!” Danny jumped about a foot.

“Sorry.” The beam of a strong flashlight came closer, as did the sound of feet crunching in the snow. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, straining his eyes to make out the man behind the low, gravely voice. He was only able to see the guy’s legs, clad in jeans and Sorel boots.

“I’m Jake Arnet. I live over there.”

He could imagine Jake pointing over his shoulder, because other than his mom’s, there was only one other house on this stretch of rural road.

“Daniel Carlson,” he said. “I’m visiting my mom.”

“Ah,” said Jake, and Danny could hear the smile in his voice. “Son of the pioneer woman. Let me guess, you killed a deer for Christmas dinner, and you’re out here tanning its hide.”

“No. I consumed a veggie-soy loaf and a sugar-, dairy-, and gluten-free pumpkin pie for Christmas dinner, followed by a secret bag of potato chips I smuggled onto the premises, and now I am on my way to the outhouse because my mother apparently can’t be bothered to prevent her goddamned pipes from freezing.”

Jake laughed. A throaty, sexy laugh that warmed the frigid air. Danny wondered suddenly how old Jake was. Probably a sixty-something hermit like Danny’s mother. Why would you choose to live out here unless you’d been around the block a few times and/or were slightly mentally unhinged?

“You want to use my bathroom?”

The offer sent a jolt of pleasure through Danny’s frozen system. To take a piss without a coat on. To not have to worry about dropping his phone into the abyss. To wash his hands with hot water. The sound that ripped from his throat sounded vaguely, embarrassingly, orgasmic.

“I take it that’s a yes?”

“A thousand times yes.”

Another chuckle. “I hear you. I’m just out here for some firewood, and it’s cold enough. I don’t know how your mother does it.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Danny said as he let Jake’s beam of light guide him along a shoveled path. “Would you happen to know if my mother has a butter churn?”

“She does indeed.”

Danny shook his head at the impossibly starry night sky, and soon they’d reached Jake’s house, its windows dotted with warm, yellow light.

“Oh, you have electricity. God bless you.”

“And a furnace, and running water. I like to live large.”

Danny tried not to run the last few feet to the door.

“It’s open,” said Jake from behind him. “Just go in. I’m going to leave some of this wood on the porch.”

Danny gratefully did as instructed, pushing open the door and emerging into…the Davy Crockett edition of Architectural Digest.

The house was gorgeous. There was wood everywhere in the open-concept space—floors, a wall of cabinets, an enormous island that divided the kitchen from the living area. Low, warm light made everything glow. This was a log cabin fit for a king.

“Bathroom is just down the hall,” said Jake, coming in behind him and facing away from Danny as he shook the snow off his coat in the entryway.

The voice from the dark, it turned out, inhabited a tall, trim body. The jeans he’d caught a mere impression of outside hugged a spectacular ass. Danny closed his eyes for a moment. Look at him, ogling a straight, elderly mountain man. Had it come to this? This was the last year he spent Christmas in Cowbit.

Jake straightened, turned, and smiled.

Holy shit.

Not only was Jake not elderly, he couldn’t have been more than thirty-five.

Too bad Danny couldn’t also have been wrong about the straight part. Because Jake was gorgeous. But these butch mountain men always were. This one had black hair, green eyes, and full, pink naturally-pouty lips.

“After you use the bathroom, I’ll fortify you with real Christmas dinner—I’ve got leftovers.” When Danny didn’t say anything, just stood there gaping, Jake added, “If you want. Or, just use the bathroom.”

The prospect of contraband mashed potatoes jarred Danny into moving. As he passed a roaring fire in the living room, he almost wept as he stopped for a moment to hold his icy hands up to the flames. “I thought when you said you were getting firewood that maybe you heated this place with a wood stove.”

“Nope, forced air.” Jake grinned. “Just having a fire for the sake of it. If you can’t have a roaring fire on Christmas Eve, when can you?”

###

After standing with his hands under the hot tap for several minutes, Danny came back out to the main room to find a plate full of food on the coffee table in front of the fire.

“Oh my God,” he moaned. He knew he should probably wait until Jake reappeared, but the sight of gravy-drenched turkey and the mashed potatoes of his dreams threw all sense of decorum out the window, and he just sat right down and picked up a fork.

“You want a drink?” Jake asked from the kitchen. “I’m just back from dinner at a friend’s, and I could use one—it’s too dark and icy out here to mess with even one drink when you’re driving. Wine? Beer? I’ve got whiskey, too.”

“You choose,” said Danny, unable to form a more articulate sentence on account of the goat cheese and bacon-flecked mashed potatoes he had just placed on his tongue.

He swallowed as Jake approached with two glasses of red wine. “These potatoes are the best thing I have ever eaten in my entire life.”

“Aww. You’re just saying that because you’ve only had soy loaf today.”

“Did you make them? They’re unnaturally good.”

“I did. Took them to a potluck—all the local strays banded together for Christmas dinner—and I came back with some leftovers of everything.”

“Which I am demolishing,” Danny put his fork down. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Jake motioned for him to continue. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I imagine staying with your mother is…challenging. Providing some protein and booze is the least I can do.”

“Do you know her well?”

“I’ve only been here ten months, so not really. We’re friendly enough. I tried to give her some advice about her corn last summer.

“Let me guess?” Danny said. “You told her to—I don’t know—water it, maybe?” Danny’s mom was under the impression that nature would provide everything. That all people needed to do was adjust their consumerist ways and then bask in the bounty of nature.

“Guilty as charged. I may have also suggested fertilizer.”

“Oooh. I bet she has a voodoo doll of you somewhere in her house.”

“She has been a little…distant lately.” Jake laughed. “It’s good of you to come visit, though.”

“I almost didn’t. My best friend usually comes with me, but she didn’t this year.” He thought of Cassie, who was no doubt cozied up with her billionaire boyfriend. They had only just admitted their feelings for one another, and it had been a happily-ever-after worthy of a romance novel. He’d be lucky if he ever found that kind love. He was happy for her, but in truth, he was a little jealous. And not just because she had heat and running water this Christmas.

He was getting maudlin. Time to change the subject. “So what about you? You farm?” Danny mother’s use of the word farm was impressionistic. Her place was a hobby farm at best. He hadn’t really noticed any crops in the immediate vicinity, but then, it was the dead of winter, and what did he know?

“Nope. I’m a carpenter.”

“That’s why this place is so gorgeous.” He eyed Jake, who, with the warm glow of the fire dancing on the sharp planes of his face, was just as gorgeous as his house. What a freaking shame. “How does a carpenter such as yourself end up in Cowbit?” He gestured at the wall of cabinets. “You could make a fortune selling those in Toronto.”

“I grew up in Peterborough,” Jake said, naming the small city that lay a couple hours to the south. “I’ve moved around a bit recently.” He smiled sheepishly. “Well, I went through a big break up recently, to be honest. One of those that makes you reassess your whole life, you know?

Danny didn’t know. He’d had a few doses of minor heartbreak, like anyone, but the idea of a love that changed everything was totally foreign to him. If he hadn’t watched Cassie and Jack tumble headlong into it, he would have said it was the stuff of fairy tales.

“I’d always wanted to start my own cabinet-making business, and after I picked myself up and dusted myself off, I thought, why the hell not? I don’t have any more to lose.”

“But why here?”

Jake shrugged. “If I’m being honest, I think part of the answer is that I was running away. My life was so intertwined with my ex. Same friends, all that. I needed something radically different. And this place was cheap, and it has a huge heated outbuilding I use as a workshop.”

Danny wanted to whistle his admiration. Jake seemed to be saying that he was a mess, but Danny saw quite the opposite: a man who’d taken control and changed his life, making it into something worthwhile and admirable.

It was strange to be sitting by the fire with a stranger, listening to him talk so openly. He was struck with the overwhelming desire to reciprocate, and, before he could think better of it, he blurted, “My best friend just got together with the guy of her dreams, and I’m afraid things will never be the same between us.

Where the hell had that come from?

“And also that I’ll be alone my whole life.”

And that?

But instead of getting up and running away screaming, Jake just nodded. “I know the feeling. But if you’ll excuse me going all Walden Pond on you for a moment, I think it’s important to accept that you might be alone forever. Any of us might be.”

“Well, aren’t you a bundle of Christmas joy?” Danny had been trying to lighten the mood, but the joke had almost caught in his thickening throat.

“I’m serious. That’s my big takeaway from the break up. You have to be okay with being alone. I know I sound like a self-help book, but it’s true. It’s impossible to have a meaningful relationship, romantic or platonic, if part of the reason you’re in it—even a tiny part of the reason—is that you’re afraid to be alone.”

Jake shook his head. “Dude. Sorry. I got carried away there.” He poured some more wine into Danny’s glass. “You came over to use the bathroom, and now I’m laying all this philosophy shit on you.”

Danny smiled. “It’s okay.” He refrained from saying that Jake’s comments had hit a little too close to home. He took a big gulp of wine, then cleared his throat. “Well, whoever your ex is, she sounds like a great big idiot to me. If she can walk away from a guy who makes mashed potatoes like this, she’s not right in the head.”

Jake, who had been staring at the fire, swung his gaze to Danny. Stared at him for a long moment.

I’m blogging over at Entangled in Romance today about how the official song of my debut romance novel, Saving the CEO, is the theme song to the children’s TV show Blue’s Clues. As I said in that post, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself lucky.

I was kidding of course. (Kind of. When I’m old and gray, that song will probably still give me PTSD. And then I’ll arrive at the pearly gates and a pack of blue squeaky dogs will make me solve mysteries before I get in.)

Want to know what the theme song for the book is? Why, it’s Love’s the Only Rule, by my boyfriend, Jon Bon Jovi.

What? You didn’t know JBJ was my boyfriend? That’s okay, he doesn’t either. Jon and I have been dating since the early 1980s, when his hair was bigger than mine, but whatever.

I tried to find a better pic of 1980s era JBJ, but we’re all about respecting copyright here at jennyholiday.com, and this was the only creative commons one I could find. But REMEMBER? (Photo by Rhonda Oglesby via Flickr.)

Love’s the Only Rule is the perfect song for my characters Jack and Cassie, because, man do these two ever have rules. Jack especially is the poster boy for the tightly wound, Type A persona. But as the back cover copy of the book says, you don’t build a business empire without a little discipline.

Enter Cassie, the math genius who is is perfectly positioned to rescue a business deal gone sour for Jack. And, of course, she’s going to force his hand on a few other issues, too. All I will say is: rules will be broken, people. In an enjoyable way.

Joking aside, I actually listened to this song obsessively while working on edits for this book. I love the way it builds, just like a story, until it feels like the chorus is inevitable. Just like a good love story.

[Insert that one time when I thought I would go on maternity leave and finish my book and get an agent and get a book deal…oh, and care for an infant here.] [In my defense, I do live in Canada, Land of the One Year Mat Leave.]

[Now you should go fix a snack in order to simulate time passing. Eat it and watch a TV show, then get back to me.]

Well then, my friends, I got me an agent. I got me a kick-ass agent. That had always been goal number one. Like, to the extent that I actually avoided having my work seen by editors, which made for a few pathetically-comic situations in which editors wanted to see said work. (More on this in another post. Maybe.) There is more to say here, for sure. I can make entire speeches on the following topics: Why do you need an agent in the current publishing climate? Why do you need an agent when many publishers accept unagented manuscripts? Couldn’t you make 80 bazillion more dollars self-publishing? But I shan’t make them now (the arguments, not the dollars). (More on this in another post. Maybe.)

The relevant point is that said agent called me the day after my 40th birthday to tell me there was interest in my books.

Picture this, if you will: you just turned 40. It was fun. You got a massage and then you went to dinner sans child. However, now you are 40 + one day. And your very-early-January birthday always lines up with the first week back to work after the holidays. And you always extend your holiday overconsumption to your birthday because, come on, when your birthday is this close to New Year’s you might as well round up. So when it is one day past your birthday, the fun is over on SO MANY FRONTS. Holidays over. Time for kale. Back to work. You are 40 and there is NOTHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO EVER AGAIN.

I was, in fact, having a monologue on this very topic to my friend Lulu whilst washing dishes when my agent called. (ON THE OTHER PHONE. Sometimes I want to go back to my 1985 self and be like, you are NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS SHIT.) Then a complicated chain of emails and voicemails and calling back commenced, because my 1985 self is basically still in charge of my life.

So there was some to-ing and fro-ing (not in my heart, just about the contract details) and, lo, a couple months later I have signed a three-book deal with Entangled Publishing. Regencies! Like, it’s 1813 and shit! Maybe you will want to read them! (Probably you should just go back and re-watch Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice but you can only do that for six hours every day, so what the hell else are you going to do with all those other hours?)

So, in summation: Being 40 kind of sucked. Being 40 + one day kind of rocked.